Behind Our Backs
by want your rad bromance
Summary: IchiRuki, humour: Looking for his own body is pretty much the last thing Ichigo wants to be doing today, especially considering who's in it in his stead. Rukia is confusing, Urahara is a bastard, and Kon is nowhere in sight.


A/N: Ohai, everyone. In your FFN, spamming your Author Watch, it's Naoko! This idea just wouldn't leave me alone yesterday morning, and so I had to write it down for the lulz. Contains Ichigo fail!derping over Rukia, Urahara and Yoruichi being glorious bastards, and misbehaving gikon.

* * *

Ichigo's room was seldom empty, between its normal inhabitant and Kon. The latter, however, was nowhere to be found. Rukia and Ichigo peered in through the window, expressions of mixed confusion and annoyance on their faces.

"How hard is it for him to stay in one place for a couple minutes?" Ichigo muttered, barely resisting the urge to whack his head against the glass in exasperation. He could already imagine the horrors Kon could be committing this very second in _his_ body- chasing after Inoue, feeling up Tatsuki, generally making a complete and utter moron of himself. All of this while wearing _Ichigo's_ face, a face he very much wanted to be able to show in public tomorrow without getting it beaten in by a mob of angry women.

"It's not like Chappy to leave her assigned location, though..." Rukia murmured, only half in response. Ichigo inwardly groaned at her completely incomprehensible love for some psychotic rabbit whose goal in life seemed to be to mutilate him in any way possible. Turning around, he scanned the horizon in search of any orange-haired guys springing up across it, but the only break in the cloudless summer sky was the sun, beating down mercilessly on his thick black robes. Glancing downwards, he sighed in relief at the absence of his sisters or goat-chin in the vicinity- all of them could see him at this point, and he wasn't too keen on explaining why he was floating outside his bedroom window without a body. A series of clipped beeps emitted from Rukia's cell phone as she jammed the keys with her thumbs, looking very much like an elementary schooler pretending to be a "big kid" without much success. "I'm not picking up a signal from either of them," she informed him, brows furrowed in perturbation. He leaned over her to look at the tiny screen against the sun's glare, almost unconsciously, but pulled away abruptly the second his chest brushed her shoulder. She looked up at him with that face she seemed to reserve just for when he did something stupid- eyebrows cocked, lips quirked at just the right angle... The right angle for what? Kissing? Grimacing, Ichigo shook his head and ran a hand through his hair, hoping against hope that her keen eyes wouldn't catch on to the slight flush on his face, one he would blame on the heat to the very end.

"Let's ask Urahara," he grumbled, turning in that direction without waiting for her answer. Rukia caught up with him easily, studying him far too closely for his liking.

Ururu was sweeping the porch when they arrived, and though it was the kind of day where little kids were supposed to have fun, she looked- as usual- like someone had just killed her puppy. She curtsied to them both, and pointing inside, whispered:

"Manager is in the back..."

Ichigo nodded and pushed open the sliding door, holding it just long enough for Rukia to slip under his outstretched arm and walk inside, calling Urahara's name as she went. He stared after her, suddenly realizing just how small she really was, how delicate but firm, like some sort of... Shaking his head furiously, he cut off the train wreck of a thought. He was about as poetic as a dead cat, as far as he was concerned, and his attempts at piecing together this sudden, new way he saw her were going nowhere coherent. Slamming the door shut just a little too loudly, Ichigo stomped after her, doing his very best to seem cool and composed like Ishida- only less nerdy and prissy.

Urahara greeted them with an obnoxiously bright smile and wave, stepping out from some sort of storage room. "Kurosaki-san, Kuchiki-san! How might this humble shopkeeper be of assistance to two fine, young Shinigami today?"

"Have you seen Kon and Chappy?" Rukia asked quickly, almost before Urahara had a chance to finish. He tapped his chin with his fan as he pondered in his overly-comical way.

"They weren't where you left them, then?" he asked in a lilting voice, like he was playing some sort of game with little kids.

"If they were, we wouldn't be _looking_ for them, would we?" Ichigo replied, much grumpier-sounding than he'd meant it to be. Maybe it was the heat, maybe it was the fact that Kon was probably traipsing around and humiliating him, maybe it was the... The _whatever_ with Rukia, but he really wasn't in the mood for Urahara today. Completely ignoring his foul temper, Urahara moved along.

"What makes you think they would've come here?"

"Maintenance?" Rukia suggested wryly, clearly not forgetting the mishap that had led to Kon being let loose in the first place. Urahara's cheshire grin only grew wider, and he pointed to another door with a snap of his fan.

"As it just so happens, I had a few other customers arrive a little while ago asking for a little favour, and, well, who was I to turn them down? You can come on out now, you two. Any longer and I think Kurosaki-san and Kuchiki-san might get angry~" It took Ichigo a moment to realize that the last part had not been addressed to them, but the confusion was quickly overtaken by exasperation and Kon's- his own head and that of Rukia's gigai popped out from behind the door, looking way more ruffled than Ichigo had remembered leaving them. Kon opened his mouth in a goofy grin, but Ichigo had his Shinigami Seal out and smacked into his chest before the stupid gikon could start babbling. Slipping back into his body, he bent down to pick up the little green pill, only to stop short halfway back up. Something felt... Different. Lighter. Like he'd just run longer than he'd ever had before, to be greeted at the finish line with cold water and a soft bed to fall right onto. All the snappiness and anger he'd felt melted away- in fact, he felt almost like he was _glowing_. Looking over at Rukia, he saw her patting her gigai in much the same sense of pleased bewilderment, her cheeks flushed, hair slightly ruffled, lips fuller than usual, like someone had kissed them over and over again... Scowling, Ichigo turned back to Urahara, firmly reminding himself that he had no clue what the hell a girl's- a _woman's_ lips were supposed to look like after someone kissed them, and he didn't _want_ to know. Urahara had opened his fan and put it over his mouth, though it did zilch to hide the smirk growing as he watched them.

"That's odd..." Rukia murmured, shaking a leg jerkily. "The calibration seems to be off..." In near perfect synch, she turned with Ichigo to glare at Urahara, whose grin was nearly reaching his ears.

"What did you stick in her _now_, Urahara?" Ichigo demanded, the disaster of the Hougyouku all too fresh in his mind. The door Urahara had come from opened again to reveal none other than Yoruichi-san, clad in nothing but a cream corset that stood in sharp contrast to her dark skin. Her smirk matched Urahara's, and her golden eyes twinkled with mirth the way they did whenever she was about to start sexually harassing him. Leaning lazily on Urahaha's shoulder, she surveyed the two of them like a cat with cream.

"It's not what Kisuke 'put in her'," she explained, laughter evident in her rich voice, "Rather, it's what you- or _Kon_, should I say, put in her."

Ichigo stared at her, completely baffled as to what the hell Kon could have stuck into Rukia's body... Urahara and Yoruichi-san looked like they were about to burst into full-out evil laughter, and when he turned to Rukia, it all slowly, horribly began to make sense. The sense of ecstasy, the flushed cheeks, the mussed clothes...

Ichigo was certain he'd never be able to face Rukia again, and Kon found himself bound and gagged behind the Kurosaki family toilet for the next two weeks, Hollows or no.


End file.
